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What We’re Reading Now

By Mark Bittman June 25, 2015 3:07 pmJune 25, 2015 3:07 pm

Photo

A horse watches over the historic site of Fort Phil Kearny in Banner, Wyoming.Credit Anne Sherwood for The New York Times

Agricultural lobbyists in Washington are gearing up for a major battle – this time, with each other. (You gotta love that.) Departing from decades of traditional unity, Big Corn is investing heavily in an attack on Big Sugar, hoping to unwind a lucrative package of subsidies that’s among the most generous in U.S. agriculture.

A Wyoming rancher lays out five common-sense reasons why farmers and ranchers should get ahead of regulators and start making their operations ecologically sustainable now. Really great.

Employing Orwellian “doublespeak,” the Texas Department of Agriculture issued a press release that simultaneously touted its efforts to combat child obesity while also lifting a decade-old ban on deep fat fryers in public schools. Because nothing slims a child’s waist faster than a helping of French fries.

What-a-shock department: If done properly, intermittent fasting can benefit your waistline and reduce levels of molecules associated with diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Though fair warning: it will probably also make you very hangry.

A New York City regulator accused Whole Foods of routinely overcharging customers for pre-packaged food by overstating the products’ weight – “the worst case of mislabeling” investigators had seen in their careers.

Most areas of the United States could supply 80-100 percent of their populations with food grown or raised within 50 miles. This, of course, was the case from the dawn of agriculture until maybe 75 years ago, and still is around much of the world.

Companies can predict whether a new product is likely to flop based on a surprising metric: positive feedback from consumers who bought — and loved — products that failed in the past. (One study calls these customers “harbingers of failure.”)

A high-sugar diet not only hurts your figure (not to mention your teeth), it also appears to make your brain less adaptive to change.

“Theoretically, China has strict food safety regulations, but execution is often the problem.” Talk about an understatement: 100,000 tons of smuggled frozen meat was seized by authorities, some of it more than 40 years old.

A new report out by Food and Water Watch reveals a striking paradox for today’s food movement. At the same time that organic, sustainable food and its advocates have spread across the country, factory farming has exploded. Two pieces from writers on the so-called left and, interestingly, the so-called right (this is a terrific piece), grapple with what this means for the food movement’s future.

About

Mark Bittman writes (mostly) about food for the Times Opinion pages, and is The Magazine’s lead food columnist. He is the author of “VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00” and “How To Cook Everything”. His Web site is markbittman.com.